United Artists Redux

Repost From July 20, 2010. 

Given the excitement over Amanda Hocking and Barry Eisler. Amidst radical change forced on them by major advances in technology (largely out of their control), a small group of leading media producers have joined together to establish their own (insert word): broadcaster, publisher, studio, agency. Unlikely? Not now, because the functions that support these traditional media companies are increasingly becoming commoditised, enabling the creative producers (writers, authors, producers, etc.) to potentially collect more of the revenues generated from their creative output. While individual authors have gained some attention by 'going direct,' either by working through Amazon (J.A. Konrath) or direct to consumers via the iPad (Ryu Mirakami), it may be that traditional publishers have more to fear from groups of authors, editors and agents conspiring to establish their own media companies. 

These new companies would leverage the available low-cost 'back office' functions and the readily available supply-chain provision to dis-intermediate the traditional publishing monolith. In 1919, United Artists was formed by D. W. Griffith, Charlie Chaplin, Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks. These four performers established United Artists to gain greater control over their own work and to produce other work they thought valuable. The four partners eventually hired an executive to run the operation who, in addition to signing new actors and producers to United Artists, also established a movie theater chain. 

United Artists was ultimately unsuccessful as the changes in the industry largely exceeded the ability of the partners to adapt. Yet this model resonates in an age where 'infrastructure' is becoming less important than author, character and content branding. 

If a similar group of content creators were to establish a new "United Artists" organization they wouldn't find it difficult to hire executives to act on their behalf to establish a new publishing organization. This new organization would be unencumbered by either the traditional publishing model or (more importantly) the cost structure of the business. These United Artists would sit atop an organization that would be largely supported by external third-party agreements with accounting firms, editorial and production services, distribution and fulfillment, etc. Important value-added services such as marketing, promotion, content rights and licensing - those functions that, by definition, worked closest to the content creators and added real value to the consumer experience would be full-time hires of United Artists. 

In discussing authors 'going direct,' there are frequent suggestions that this could become an avalanche with traditional publishers seeing their best and most profitable content producers leave the fold. This belies the difficulty of an author having to do all the nasty stuff the publisher does for them if they go it alone. However, what if the author became a partner in his or her own publishing company? Then, perhaps, the model changes and the options begin to look more appealing for the content producer and potentially problematic for the traditional publisher. 

Could recently reported news by Variety that Steve Ross had joined joined Abrams Artist Agency to provide "consulting services to a select list of clients" be an indication that PND isn't the first to revive the United Artists idea? 

See my post from last week about scale and infrastructure: The Baked Beans are Off.

North Beach San Francisco

North Beach San Francisco 2008

A weekly image from my archive. Click on the image to make it larger.

I've visited San Francisco many times beginning in 1977 and just enjoy the architecture of the whole city. This image is from 2008 when I was visiting on business and was lucky enough to have a bright blue sky day. Even though it is a city of hills, I enjoy walking it and I also try to do a run from the Ferry building to the GG bridge at least once when I am there. The run is flat as a pancake.

Join me on Flickr

Taking it on the Chin

Maybe Google tried too hard to stir the ocean with a swizzle stick. Way back in time, Google believed that indexing printed content that they had scanned represented a fair use of that content and compatible with the method they used to index web pages upon which they (and many other companies) had built search businesses. Judge Chin’s ruling that the court would not approve the Google book settlement is a set back for Google and the AAP/AG but it is not the end and, actually Google still hasn’t “lost” in the sense that their original issue has been adjudicated.

Who knows where this case will go next? One possible scenario is that the parties will agree a new settlement that removes the problematic issues that Chin identified but the core issues related to the extent of fair use and the ‘orphan’ works problem are likely to remain unaddressed both by this case and by anyone else. Congress is not going to provide a solution but in the unlikely event that they did address these issues the outcome would probably be detrimental to the public interest as has their prior work on copyright in recent decades. Remember also that the ‘orphan’ problem is not restricted to books but pretty much all media from watercolors to video. It is a complicated and expansive problem: A veritable ocean of competing and conflicting interests that is unlikely to be concluded anytime soon. One result of an approved settlement which I thought possible was had it been approved then Congress may have been more likely to act and the fact of the settlement might have established a framework Congress could use in enacting a law.

Google has moved the copyright peanut forward. Most commentators interviewed prior to 2005 would not have known or understood what an ‘orphan’ was in this context and at least many of us now conceptually understand what or who they represent. So with so many people now educated about the issue perhaps the on-going conversations can serve to move the industry(ies) in a positive direction. Unfortunately, we still don’t know the size of the potential problem in books – maybe it really doesn’t matter – and while my analysis was widely discussed and cited no one really disputed the conclusions which either means I was right on (unlikely) or no one else could be bothered to drawn different conclusions.

Over the past three years, the Book Rights Registry (run by friend of the blog Michael Healy) has been quietly building a repository of data on claimants. As many predicted, the number of claimants that have come forward is small in comparison with the number of titles that have been scanned and the database may not shed any greater light on the Orphan problem than we already know: Orphans either don’t exist, don’t care or don’t know. Whether we will ever see any data out of this collection effort isn’t clear but if it were provided the information might represent another opportunity to educate us on the ‘orphan’ community. More data will help understand the issue and help with a possible solution. The BRR could still be an effective clearing house for copyright claims and few would dispute we need that but who would pay?

Setting aside that the settlement was by no means perfect and represented an agreement between parties of ‘questionable status’ appeasing ‘bad behavior’, if your position in this fight was that the settlement enabled a vast collection of content available for the greater good then I don’t think you’ve ‘lost’ just yet. What happens next and particularly what happens to all the scanned archives at libraries across the US will be broadly discussed in the coming weeks. Some resolution we be announced in the short term: As this decision took longer and longer to come the parties must have been thinking about alternative scenarios. One significant issue however is that two of the main protagonists in this agreement - Richard Sarnoff from Random House and Dan Clancy of Google have moved on to other things. How that will impact the proceedings hereon is hard to determine although it might not be negative.

Meanwhile, Mr. Healy and the Book Rights Registry will probably continue to wait out further resolution but how professionally satisfying this will be to him and his team would be a question. Without doubt by now the BRR was supposed to be operational and adjudicating and licensing and effecting use of a vast archive of human knowledge. It will be hurry up and wait again at the BRR and libraries across the world.

Elsevier's SciVal Strata: Evaluating Researchers

Elsevier announced the availability of SciVal Strata (an odd name) which enables a user to evaluate the performance - both actual and projected - of individual or teams of researchers. The product uses data from Scopus and the tool can be used by all members of a subscribing institution to demonstrate research excellence and to secure, allocate and measure return-on-investment of funding. Applications for the tool could include recruitment, promotion and/or collaboration and project planning.

Scopus is the largest abstract and citation database of research literature and quality web sources covering nearly 18,000 titles from more than 5,000 publishers and its' use in this context is interesting. It is yet another Elsevier example of using data mining to extract value where it might not otherwise be obvious.

More from the press release:

SciVal Strata allows researchers and decision makers throughout academic and governmental organizations to evaluate performance and demonstrate the value of research in ways that are most relevant to their career stage, field of expertise and topics of interest. Moreover, it enables users to envision alternate research groups by ‘dragging and dropping’ any researcher across the globe into hypothetical teams and gauge expected changes in performance by benchmarking ‘fantasy’ groups against existing groups. Developed in collaboration with research organizations and powered by the breadth of Scopus, SciVal Strata provides a unique context for decision-making by visualizing the performance of teams and researchers both inside and outside of an organization.

“This tool complements current methodologies used by universities and government agencies by measuring the performance of research teams and individuals in ways that were not possible before,” said Jay Katzen, Managing Director of Elsevier Academic and Government Products. “SciVal Strata can help users make more informed research decisions based on relevant benchmarks and measures, such as citations or document output. This new approach will empower users to more accurately assess research performance according to criteria most important to them and help justify funding, hiring decisions and partner opportunities.”